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Comment by jseliger | Hacker News Reader

Put me in the camp that's very anti-AirBnB as a resident who doesn't want where I lived turned into a hotel. I live in NYC. It's a problem.

The real problem here is not Airbnb, which is a symptom; it's zoning, which forbids market-clearing prices and a sufficient number of units to satisfy demand for living in and visiting the city.

For more on this, see e.g. Matt Yglesias's The Rent is Too Damn High: https://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp/B... .

When we have sane zoning, we'll have sane prices. Today there was an NYT opinion piece that comes at the issue from a racial angle: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/03/opinion/sunday/zoning-law... but I don't think we even need the racial angle; we can come at it from a position of fundamental justice and human flourishing.

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>"The real problem here is not Airbnb, which is a symptom; it's zoning, which forbids market-clearing prices and a sufficient number of units to satisfy demand for living in and visiting the city."

Maybe you haven't been to NYC in a while? This is not the case at all. New York City has undergone a hotel boom over the last 7-8 years, so much so that it has actually driven down the price of hotels:

See: https://ny.curbed.com/2016/4/20/11471644/new-york-city-hotel...

and

http://www.wnyc.org/story/new-york-citys-hotel-boom-keeping-...

Zoning a problems in NYC? The amount of condos and pace of real-estate development in NYC is head spinning. I can't think of another city that is more developer friendly. In fact developers have even been entitled to tax subsidies for their efforts. See:

https://ny.curbed.com/2016/1/15/10846176/everything-you-need...

There is no hotel zoning that any city would come up with that would allow for the creation of one-room hotels in the middle of condo and apartment buildings.

Sure, but Airbnb is (from one angle) just a weird and hacky way of adding more hotel rooms to a city's supply. Zoning that permitted more and taller hotels could meet demand with fewer negative externalities.

Similarly, relaxed zoning for residential buildings could lower the size of the effect on the housing market when a unit is converted to Airbnb use.

You're fleeing to abstraction. I'm making a simple point, derived from the specific complaint that my NYC friends have about Airbnb: there is no plausible change to hotel regulation that would ever allow people to open up single-room hotels in apartment and condo buildings.

Sure. There is a plausible change that would remove the impetus to do so. I don't think anyone is suggesting that zoning should endorse Airbnb-style "hotels," but that maybe it should fix the underlying problems instead of just patching the loophole.

That's a false dilemma. The problem we're discussing here is easily fixed by making short-term rentals in apartment and condo buildings unlawful, which is probably what will end up happening. There's nothing that says that can't happen independent of any other regulatory changes.

The problem we're discussing here is easily fixed by making short-term rentals in apartment and condo buildings unlawful

This is already the case in NYC. What's needed is enforcement.

Perhaps through the use of a RICO action with wire fraud predicates against Airbnb and its principals. Taking money in exchange for a room that the company knows or should know is not legally available may well constitute "obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, or omitted facts."

As a New Yorker who has recently considered buying an apartment in Queens, short-term rental prohibition isn't a law I want.

A NYC apartment would be my biggest financial commitment, and not having help with the mortgage from a subleter when I elect to travel at any point over the next 30 years is a crippling constraint.

Why should your neighbors help shoulder the cost of your financing your vacations with short-term renters?

How would they be?

By bearing the negative externalities of your short term rental? I lived above an NYC airbnb for a while, and of course it was always a noisy partying crew. Which of course makes sense because it's people on holiday/vacation renting on airbnb! But it's pretty disruptive to someone renting the next apartment who isn't on vacation.

What if you get a noisy neighbor who isn't an AirBnB guest, but lives there permanently? That seems worse. Do you have no recourse in that case?

Why wouldn't you have recourse in that case?

Because it's not illegal to make noise in your apartment? Noise ordinances typically have a high threshold and are a pain to get enforced, except maybe in really obvious cases like college-style parties.

Maybe you don't have a ton of legal recourse, but since they are a semi permanent neighbor you can just talk to them. Add opposed to someone that's just there for the weekend.

If someone is inconsiderate enough to make excessive noise on a sustained basis, why would they respond well to being confronted about it?

Remember, community and interaction among neighbors is maximized the countryside, high in sprawl, and barely existent in mid-rises, and zero in high-rises. The more your neighbors influence your quality of life, the less socially acceptable it is to interact with them (and the less likely you are to see them, since the primary means of interacting with neighbors is to spend time in your yard). There's not going to be a basis of mutual respect in a noisy urban apartment building like there would be on a block of single-family homes.

By paying higher rents because short term lets (at least on the airbnb model) inflate the rental market?

As I said it is already the law+. See MDL, Article 1, Sections 4-7, 4-8.

If that means that it no longer makes sense for you to buy an apartment then you probably shouldn't buy an apartment. I certainly wouldn't hold my breath on it being repealed. The law was recently amended to make advertising an illegal apartment rental itself illegal and subject to a fine.

+There is an exception if you are renting out only part of an apartment and you or a long term tenant will be present. Also, the situation for buildings with three or fewer units is more complicated.

I'm not sure there's great evidence that zoning actually has positive outcomes, I remember reading long articles on how places with less zoning can often turn out better. American zoning has entrenched cars and made sterile neighbourhoods allegedly.

So it seems to me the sequence is:

   a) You have a decent city with reasonable rents
   b) AirBNB
   c) Same city with outrageous rents
   -- Choose either --
   d1) Now we have to change the building codes and 
   wait for the effect of the invisible hand to complete 
   the massive change to the city so that there is a huge 
   new housing stock at the same rents as before

   -- or Choose --
   d2) Now we have to ban AirBNB and have the city return 
    to its original reasonable state.

Forget for the moment the NYMBYist case for (d2). What about the tourist case? Is a tourist just as interested in the new form of the city with four additional new stories on every residential acre plus the increased grocery stores? What about the rest of the infrastructure that has to be built to support all this density? Is the open-minded local commuter going to want to continue to live in the (d1) environment as it grows more and more dense and commutes (on foot and by subway) grow worse and worse? Is this really "flourishing" or just the shortest path to a Blade Runner set with actual people?

> it's zoning, which forbids market-clearing prices and a sufficient number of units to satisfy demand for living in and visiting the city.

lol tourists and rich investors/other rich undesirables are ALWAYS going to outprice the lower and middle tiers, you need massive amounts of regulation to prevent rich-people-only city areas.

I'm not sure what regulations can keep the price down without having lots of weird scenarios and adverse effects. If you can then that's great but I haven't seen it work in practice yet. It makes more sense to me to try to increase the supply of housing

lol tourists and rich investors/other rich undesirables are ALWAYS going to outprice the lower and middle tiers, you need massive amounts of regulation to prevent rich-people-only city areas.

Really? Was that true in the 1970s or 80s? https://jakeseliger.com/2015/12/27/why-did-cities-freeze-in-... If not, what might have changed between then and now?

* Taxes on property reduced, turning it into a more desirable asset to hoard.

* Wealth inequality went through the wealth meaning more wealth seeking hoardable assets (bitcoin is also part of this phenomena, imo).

* Governments stopped building social housing, cutting off supply of new apartments.

Airbnb squeezing people out and low interest rates are symptoms of this phenomenon.

Cutting zoning restrictions is just what property developers like to blame it on because it acts as an impediment to them building more profitable luxury developments. For some reason people listen to them.

> If not, what might have changed between then and now?

I think that what we're seeing today is what happened back in '70, just in extreme overdrive.

Mainy caused, imho, by a massive explosion of the amount of money in circulation, which craves to be invested. Given that Yo could get 1.5M$ at 10M$ valuation, there's nothing better in the current ultra-low-interest environment than to invest the money in housing stock.

Also, the massive flow of capital from new-rich Chinese and Russians (which mainly affected London, but side flows also hit Berlin and Frankfurt) is a factor.

Massive transportation by cheap planes tickets, the internet with airbnb to list and rent the appartements, China tourism.

I think the 70s and 80s were anomalous. White flight caused many major US cities to take a big dip in population and wealth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight

I do wonder what if there was a actual spot and contract market for housing like there is for DRAM, with zoning entirely unrestricted and free market.

solution to this issue is not using substitute company which will break laws instead of you, but voting for representatives who will change laws the way you want

apparently you are in minority if it's not happening and it doesn't justify breaking the law

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